UEFA Says Player Trading Funds Risk Soccer Match Manipulation

A top European soccer administrator
said investment funds buying stakes in players’ transfer rights
raises the risk of match fixing.

Gianni Infantino, the general secretary of ruling body
UEFA, said the group will continue to push for a ban on so-
called third-party ownership should the global managing body,
FIFA, fail to do so.

“We must protect the integrity of sporting competition,”
Infantino said in UEFA Direct, the body’s official magazine.
“What happens when the same corporation or fund owns the
economic rights in many players in different teams? There is an
obvious risk of conflicts of interest. The danger of
manipulation of results is something that UEFA must guard
against, now more than ever.”

The sport is split over whether action should be taken
against player investment, which has mushroomed since emerging
in the South America in the 1990s. Although banned in France and
England, the practice is now common in Europe as clubs look for
alternative funding amid the continuing economic crisis. Funds
say they are stepping in place of banks, and their arrangements
should be seen as loans.

Infantino’s link to match manipulation comes during a
period when the sport has dealt with several fixing scandals.

The Europol police agency in February said a Singapore-
based operation tried to fix games across Europe, including
World Cup and European Championship qualifiers, to generate more
than 8 million euros ($10.5 million) in profit.

Operation VETO

An 18-month investigation, dubbed Operation VETO, found 425
match officials, club executives, players and criminals in 15
countries worked to cheat in more than 380 matches, with another
300 targeted in other regions. Also in February FIFA gave
worldwide bans to 74 people suspended by the Italian and South
Korean federations for match-fixing and corruption.

The global gambling industry has annual revenue of $1
trillion, according to FIFA’s former head of security Chris
Eaton. In remarks he’ll deliver at sports security conference in
Doha later this month, Eaton will say 85 percent of all betting
activity takes place in under-regulated or illegal markets.

“We know for a fact that some very high profile football
matches alone attract $1 billion in global bets during one 90
minute game,” Eaton said in the remarks.

In countries including Brazil and Portugal, player
investment funds that profit if and when the talent is traded
for a higher price are an established part of soccer. Eighteen-
time Portuguese champion Sporting Lisbon has sold stakes in all
but four of its 28-member roster while in Brazil, 90 percent of
players in the country’s top league “are somehow linked to
investors,” according Jochen Loesch, president of international
business at Traffic Sports, which has invested more than $75
million in the rights of about 60 players since it was
established in 2007.

Undisclosed Investors

England’s Premier League head Richard Scudamore has said
that investors are often based in off-shore locations, making it
difficult for regulators to know who is behind them. Infantino
said the funds’ motivation to profit from sales is incompatible
with soccer.

“The business model of those involved in third-party
player ownership is predicated on players changing clubs
frequently,” he said. “Put bluntly, more transfers means more
money for such ‘owners,’ resulting in contractual instability
and long-term revenue being lost from the sport.”

To contact the reporter on this story:
Tariq Panja in the London newsroom on at
tpanja@bloomberg.net